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Websleuths News

Join Websleuths Radio for the final discussion of THE KILLING SEASON
with Josh Zemam, Rachel Mills and special guests including Bob Kolker author of Lost Girls

CA - Jeanne Pichulo, 27, Cupertino, 14 Sep 1991

I was hoping maybe some smart sleuthers could help me find information on an unsolved case of a woman I used to babysit for. She was super sweet, a devoted mother to a toddler and her life was ended way too early. All I have been able to find in MSM is a copy of a San Jose Mercury News article detailing unsolved murders of women in the area.

COLD CASES GET NEW LOOK AFTER ARREST IN 2 DEATHS
By Linda Goldston

Mercury News

In just 47 days in the fall of 1984, six women were beaten, stabbed or
strangled in Santa Clara County.

Each slaying seemed worse than the last and police weren't sure at
first if they were looking for one killer or several.

More than two decades later, two of those homicides remain unsolved but
they're getting renewed scrutiny. Now that San Jose police have
identified Luis Aguilar Perez as the first suspected serial killer in
the county, investigators are taking fresh looks at those two unsolved
cases and dozens of others for a possible connection to him -- and
hoping other departments will do the same.

``Not only are we going through our unsolved cases, we've also
requested other agencies throughout the nation to look into their
unsolved files to see if Perez is linked to any of them,'' said San
Jose police officer Enrique Garcia, spokesman for the department. ``You
never know.''

Since 1962, there have been 195 unsolved homicides in San Jose and
women were victims in about 20 percent of them, Garcia said.

Countywide, there are about 300 unsolved killings, including those in
San Jose, which has long had a reputation as one of the safest big
cities in America.

Chief Assistant District Attorney Karyn Sinunu, who formed the office's
cold case unit in January to start whittling that number down, said
``The theme of the unit is that we are not going to forget the victims
and their families.

``With the low violent crime rate we have in the county now, we're able
to work these cold cases,'' she said.

Perez, who lived in San Jose from 1983 to 1989, has been charged in two
slayings -- 50-year-old Florence Ruth Berrospe in 1984 and 61-year-old
Nestora McCune in 1989 -- and charges are pending against him for
another slaying in San Francisco.

But in a jailhouse interview with the Mercury News last week, Perez
said he told police he had killed more than 30 women in five states and
Mexico. He said he killed women in Watsonville, Chicago and New York
City, as well as North Dakota and South Dakota.

The 40-year-old serial murder suspect also told the Mercury News he had
made up the stories he told police. Authorities say he is linked to
three of the killings by DNA evidence.

Whether he is charged with more killings or not, ``we have a serial
killer,'' Sinunu said, and the renewed focus on the cold cases will
continue.

``I was a defense lawyer for 18 years, and that point of view comes in
handy in analyzing these cases,'' said Deputy District Attorney Charles
Constantinides, who was named by Sinunu to head the Cold Case Unit.

Sometimes it's luck, sometimes it's hard work and sometimes it's the
public's help that finally reins in some killers.

Constantinides said investigators would welcome any tips on the old
cases.

The 21-year-old, one of the two women slain during the string of
killings in 1984, was found by a roommate in the bedroom of her South
San Jose apartment, near Almaden Plaza, on Aug. 28 that year. She had
been stabbed to death.

A student at San Jose State University, Ralston had a brown belt in
karate and aspired to be a San Jose police officer. She put up a
furious fight for her life.

Police found a small kitchen knife, thought to be the murder weapon, in
the same room with Ralston's body.

Gwendolyn Hoffman.

The 56-year-old woman -- the other unsolved case from the 1984 string
-- disappeared from her home on Normandy Drive on Sept. 10, 1984.

Hoffman's husband, Lewis, received a call at work about 11:30 a.m. that
day, saying his wife was having problems and he should come home.

When the husband arrived home, in an unincorporated area between
Campbell and San Jose, he found his wife missing and a note that said,
``Do not call anyone. We will contact you.''

Hoffman's husband called the sheriff's department and authorities at
the time said a man was seen driving from the couple's home in the
wife's 1977 Buick Regal.

Gwendolyn Hoffman's body was found stuffed in the trunk of her car 36
hours later, about a mile from her home. A wire was wrapped tightly
around her neck.

Kristi Harris.

The popular 21-year-old hair stylist was found lying in a pool of blood
in her South Bascom Avenue apartment in San Jose, a few steps from her
front door, on Aug. 29, 1988.

One of her roommates found her body about 7:45 that night. She had been
stabbed in the back and her throat was slashed. She was dressed in a
white T-shirt and gray tights and had told her sister that she planned
to jog and do laundry that day.

The youngest of three siblings, Harris was a cheerleader at Pioneer
High School, class of 1985. She had gotten engaged and moved out of her
parent's home shortly before she was killed. She worked as a stylist at
her father's Campbell salon, Witches Hut Coiffures.

Julie Marie Bucalo.

Police discovered her body in the victim's secluded cottage in the 900
block of San Jose's Meridian Avenue on Feb. 6, 1991. Her worried
boyfriend called police after she failed to call when she said she
would.

The 26-year-old woman had been strangled or suffocated. She was found
on her waterbed, with two light blankets pulled up around her neck.
Investigators at the time said her fingernails had dug so hard into her
left palm that they caused cuts and her right wrist bore a pronounced
imprint.

Their bodies were discovered on the floor of their blood-spattered
living room at the San Jose Apartments complex on the city's East Side
on May 7, 1991. Officers were sent to check on the mother and son after
Nguyen's boyfriend alerted them.

Nguyen was sprawled face down in slacks and a sport coat, a few feet
away from the body of her son.

``She was butchered,'' Constantinides said. ``And her son, Michael, was
trying to use his teddy bear for protection when he was chased down and
stabbed.''

Jeanne Marie Pichulo.

The body of the 27-year-old mother was found in her apartment on
Rollingdell Drive in Cupertino on Sept. 14, 1991.

She died from multiple stab wounds to the chest and abdomen, apparently
after returning home from grocery shopping.

Her 2-year-old son played and slept at her side for more than a dozen
hours after she was stabbed. The boy was unharmed and later said his
mother ``fell down.''

Pichulo worked as an administrative secretary at 3Com in Santa Clara,
where she played on a company softball team.

Anyone with information on these or any other unsolved case should
e-mail Constantinides at cconsta...@da.sccgov.org or call district
attorney investigator Mike Schembri, (408) 792-2682.

I helped her when her son was a newborn to about six months of age. She was single (dad opted not to be involved), worked hard and adored her baby. It has always haunted me that he was there when this happened.

Sheriff's Sgt. Ken Kahn said Pichulo had just taken one bag of groceries into the apartment; others, including perishables, were still in her car.

''It appears she was surprised by someone at the door or waiting inside," Kahn said, "Either she was allowed to put the baby to bed, or maybe the killer brought in the baby."
Sheriff's Sgt. Ken Kahn said Pichulo had just taken one bag of groceries into the apartment; others, including perishables, were still in her car.

''It appears she was surprised by someone at the door or waiting inside," Kahn said, "Either she was allowed to put the baby to bed, or maybe the killer brought in the baby."

Sgt. Ken Kahn noted that the apartment had been ransacked, but said investigators were unclear how it had happened.

"We don't know if the ransacking was done to cover up a murder, if she interrupted a burglary, or whether someone followed her into the apartment," he said.

Pichulo , a 27-year-old administrative secretary at 3-Com Corp. in Santa Clara, was stabbed several times in the chest and abdomen. Deputies recovered the knife from her body, which was found in a bedroom.

Pichulo 's 2-year-old son, Brian, was found by his grandmother about 6:30 p.m. Saturday in a crib with the side down, Kahn said. The sheriff's spokesman said it was possible that the child had climbed out and combed through his mother's possessions.

Twenty-two years after accountant Julie Bucalo was found bound and strangled in her own bed, a jury needed only a few hours Thursday to find a former security guard where she worked guilty of breaking into her San Jose cottage and killing her.

Ralph Baldenegro, 64, who also was a former firefighter, sat stone-faced as the verdict was pronounced, after 3 ﻿1/2 months of trial, but less than eight hours of deliberations. He is already serving a 94-year sentence for attacking a girlfriend and her teenage daughter in 2006 in Fremont...

Prosecutor Dan Fehderau also argued that Baldenegro had a history both before and after Bucalo's death of assaults against women that involved handcuffs or duct tape, a knife, suffocation and choking, which jurors said they found compelling. Bucalo was helpless to fight back because she'd been handcuffed.

So I wonder how hard LE looked as this guy as a possible serial killer.